Discovery of millisecond pulsars in radio searches of southern Fermi LAT sources

TL;DR

Deep radio observations of eleven unassociated Fermi LAT gamma-ray sources led to the discovery of two millisecond pulsars and a long period pulsar, providing insights into their properties and associations.

Contribution

First deep radio search of southern Fermi LAT sources resulted in discovering two millisecond pulsars and one long period pulsar, clarifying their associations with gamma-ray sources.

Findings

Discovered two millisecond pulsars, PSR J1103-5403 and PSR J2241-5236.

Identified a long period pulsar, PSR J1604-44.

PSR J2241-5236 is a promising candidate for high precision timing.

Abstract

Using the Parkes radio telescope we have carried out deep observations of eleven unassociated gamma-ray sources. Periodicity searches of these data have discovered two millisecond pulsars, PSR J1103-5403 (1FGL J1103.9-5355) and PSR J2241-5236 (1FGL J2241.9-5236), and a long period pulsar, PSR J1604-44 (1FGL J1604.7-4443). In addition we searched for but did not detect any radio pulsations from six gammaray pulsars discovered by the Fermi satellite to a level of - 0.04 mJy (for pulsars with a 10% duty cycle). Timing of the millisecond pulsar PSR J1103-5403 has shown that its position is 9' from the centroid of the gamma-ray source. Since these observations were carried out, independent evidence has shown that 1FGL J1103.9-5355 is associated with the flat spectrum radio source PKS 1101-536. It appears certain that the pulsar is not associated with the gamma-ray source, despite the seemingly low probability of a chance detection of a radio millisecond pulsar. We consider that PSR J1604-44 is a chance discovery of a weak, long period pulsar and is unlikely to be associated with 1FGL J1604.7-4443. PSR J2241-5236 has a spin period of 2.2 ms and orbits a very low mass companion with a 3.5 hour orbital period. The relatively high flux density and low dispersion measure of PSR J2241-5236 makes it an excellent candidate for high precision timing experiments. The gamma-rays of 1FGL J2241.9-5236 have a spectrum that is well modelled by a power law with exponential cutoff, and phasebinning with the radio ephemeris results in a multi-peaked gamma-ray pulse profile. Observations with Chandra have identified a coincident X-ray source within 0.1" of the position of the pulsar obtained by radio timing